A puff of sinister cigarette smoke appears over the top of the biggest Styrofoam rock on Planet Puke-Sky, then using the magic of high-tech, state-of-the-art 1960s TV special effects, the projector is thrown in reverse. The smoke goes backwards and it kind of looks like Jeannie when she used to go into her bottle in Major Nelson's living room.
Kirk smells the cigarette smoke and sends the Red Shirts, led by Ensign Ratso Rizzo, to investigate. Smoking apparently kills faster in outer space than on Earth, and before you can sing, "Smoke Gets In Your Hemoglobin," two of the Red Shirts are dead and bled, and Ratso is on his way to sickbay. Surgeon General's Warning: This Planet May Dangerous to Pregnant Woman, Red Shirts and Tribbles.
Cue opening credits, and I notice for the first time that the woman howling the theme song sounds kind of like that time Curly rocked his rocking chair onto a cat's tail.
Kirk questions Ratso Rizzo in sickbay and asks if he smelt or dealt it. Ratso says he smelt it but emphatically did not dealt it then, because he picked the red shirt from the closet instead of the blue one when he got dressed that morning, dies.
Kirk sends down five more Red Shirts to the planet and Jeannie kills two more. Kirk is so upset that he scratches his face with his phaser, which is an incredibly dangerous and inappropriate use for a weapon, but maybe explains what vaporized his real hair.
It seems Kirk encountered Space Jeannie years before and is now obsessed with killing the cloud, marking perhaps the first of the eight million times Star Trek would flog to death Herman Melville's great masterpiece of unadulterated boredom. No, not Billy Budd, the one with the big white fish.
Spock is worried that Kirk is obsessed, so he goes downstairs where McCoy is filling out Red Shirt autopsy forms on a giant Lite-Brite They begin to plot to relieve Ahab of command. Oops! I mean Kirk.
Kirk insists that this puff of smoke is the same puff of smoke that killed everybody on his ship when he was a Starfleet Baby, even though that happened 1000 light years away. I'm not sure the physics of Star Trek's warp drive, but I'm pretty sure that 1000 light years isn't like a walk to the corner mailbox no matter what century we're in. It doesn't occur to Kirk or anyone else that the universe is very big, and that there might be more than one malevolent puff of smoke in the whole wideness of creation. Couldn't this puff of smoke be the uncle or first cousin once removed of the puff of smoke Kirk met ten years ago?
One of the Red Shirts who survived the second expedition is down in his quarters moping, and that nurse who was married to the producer and looks like somebody dressed up a cigar store Indian in a blue miniskirt feeds him a plate of multicolored Styrofoam and shows him a yellow plastic Frito with McCoy's order that he eat it all up. A grown man who doesn't feel like eating is being ordered by an unseen doctor to eat a plate of colored garbage because it's for his own good. Welcome to American health care, circa 2013.
The puff of smoke takes off into space and Kirk gives chase. Scotty announces that something has entered "number two impulse" without bothering to look at the controls. Even he can't take the red plywood and wax paper sets seriously.
Barbara Eden's in the ventilation system, and she starts to pour out of the vent in the pouting Red Shirt's cabin while Spock is there. Spock tosses the Red Shirt into the hallway and tries to cover the vent with his hands. Yes, that's right. The chief science officer on Starfleet's flagship and Commander Bigbrain of the whole United Federation of Planets thinks he can catch smoke in his hands. I'm no Vulcan space-genius, but it occurs to me that the pillow on the bed right next to him would probably be better than splayed fingers at holding back smoke.
Beware, ye space travelers, the haunted moor of the dreaded Hemo-Goblin!
Lucky for Spock, Vulcans aren't on the menu for sentient puffs of smoke, and it decides to abandon ship to grab a bicarbonate on the planet on which Kirk first encountered it. The Enterprise is supposed to rendezvous with another ship, but Kirk says no sweat. 1000 light years there, 1000 back, not counting the time it'll take to kill the smoke, will take 48 hours. Did everyone on the production team sleep through junior high school science class?
Kirk and the pouting Red Shirt we've never seen before and will never see again beam down to the planet with a floating blue bowling ball and a water cooler filled with blood. Jeannie drinks blood, which is why McCoy has so many Red Shirt autopsies to enter into his Lite-Brite. So the blood is the bait and the bowling ball is the bomb.
Rather than beam down to the spot where they intend to set off the bowling ball, Kirk and the Red Shirt carry it about 75 feet away from the water cooler of blood. They've got a whole planet to choose from, and the means to transport themselves and whatever material they need from orbit to any spot on the globe, yet they choose to beam to one spot and then walk 75 feet away from it carrying the trap and leaving the bait behind. Jeannie shows up and eats the cheese, then comes after Kirk and the Red Shirt. The Red Shirt tries to be heroic by giving Kirk an Agent 99 karate chop to the back of the neck, but Shatner's contract says he has to win all fights.
Kirk sets off the bowling ball and kills the puff of smoke, beaming out at the last second and leaving a massive dimple on the planet the size of that storm on Jupiter as a reminder to kids everywhere that smoking's bad, m'kay?
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